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Monthly Archives: June 2016

I always wanted to know how to use Photoshop – but I don’t find it easy to use and some of the tools require you to use a lot of numbers. I play on my IPhone and have a great time manipulating and layering images. I thought I would show you an example of what I do. below is a finished piece I made recently.

This started off with a poster I found on Brick lane in London

I started off layering it in Image Blender

You choose 2 images and can add filters and decide which image you want to be the most dominant by moving a slider

I chose to keep the slider at 50/50 and I used the filter called difference

Stage 2 – I like mixing images with manipulated versions of themselves – I decided to make a new version of the girl – mixing her with an other image from brick lane

I added the two images to Image Blender

This time I used the mask tool that allows you to rub out areas of one of the images

This time I used the filter called ‘plus darker’ and I slid the dot between the images over to the left

Stage 3

I opened this image in the Reflection app by ‘Big Blue Chip’

This reflects images simply along an axis which you can choose , you save the image and then re open the App and choose the reflected image to get more complicated patterns

My image reflected once

My image reflected 3 times

I decided that there was too much red in the middle so I used the editing tool and cropped the image and reflected it again

I like to rotate images to get more kaleidoscopic effects.

Rotated and reflected

Reflected again

Stage 3 – I put this image and the image from stage 1 back into Image Blender

I used the mask tool again to remove parts of the pattern to show the face

It’s quite a long winded process – but I like it because it’s intuitive and I just need to save and touch the screen to change things ﻿

Back in February I started doing the above collage exercise with Shelley Klammer – there are no prompts- but if you tag Shelley and sign up for her newsletter she will send you related stuff , which I have enjoyed reading. I wanted to explore art as therapy in a more controlled way and doing this with her 100 days of arttherapy Journalling has been an interesting exercise.
This was the first time that I had signed up to do anything with such a long commitment. I always have stacks of magazines and materials so it was an easy task to do. You scan through magazines with ‘soft eyes’ and pick out images that interest you – to be assembled as collages- pick a title and then post on Instagram.

I really liked the discipline of working with a focus everyday. However life always gets in the way – Shelley encourages you to work as continuously as possible within the 90 days- so when I knew I was busy- at the weekends -I did a few in advance or took small kits with me.

I have worked in a few different ways during the 90 days. I have included my doodles- images from Happinez magazine http://www.happinez.com/

Sometimes I have spent ages cutting out images and producing complicated layered stuff images from Happinez magazine as before

‘Love is us….’

I have really enjoyed working in this way and it has added more skills to my arsenal. I am not sure I would commit to working over such a long period of time again , though I am pleased with my journal when I flip through it and I do feel a sense of achievement.

The course is called ‘collage for self discovery’ I am not sure I have any concrete feeling of self exploration that I can put my finger on – I have enjoyed looking at everyone else’s collages and being influenced by different styles – particularly the simplicity of Uma – ( IG name textilleria) who uses very simple ripped pages to good effect. The 100 days of prompts has been much more thought provoking and demanding and I am only half way through -even though I started them both at a similar time.

Here are some more of my examples over the 90 days – images from magazines mentioned before unless otherwise stated